Forum - View topicJapanese mispronounce names/words and get away with it?
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Ktimene's Lover
 Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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I am aware dubbing gets crap when voice actors mispronounce a Japanse/Asian name or word. But this needs to apply to the Japanese as well. I saw an FMA: Brotherhood episode recently were they mispronounced the country of Xerxes as something like "Zer-zecks-oo". The new anime Canaan is pronounced "KAY-NAN" in English (Don't know how they pronounce it in Hebrew) but the characters in that show say it as "cannon". However, don't even get me started on Miyazaki's Nausicaa seeing even the dub and Japanese got the pronunciation wrong.
So, I ask why do people frequently slam dubs for mispronounced words/names but might not do the same thing for the Japanese that much. I understand Japanese pronunciations of foreign names/words isn't perfect but I think they could do better in pronouncing names/words from Indo-European languages (FMA has Edward as something like "Edwardu" when it should just be "Edward" because Edward is English and English words/names are fairly heavy in the Japanese language anime). Basically, why do the Japanese mess up on foreign words/names and not get a lot of crap for it but dubbing does for this? |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
 Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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A lot of it has to do with the fact that Japanese try to apply their own phonetic system to any foreign word, so they usually don't really put any effort to emulate a Western manner of pronunciation. No matter how weird a word might sound to us, as long as it conforms to a-u-e-i-o etc. phonetic system it's close enough. In fact they probably prefer the distorted sounding word over the correct method because it sounds more trendy and cool.
For example, how many loanwords sound exactly like the original word that they come from? The Japanese consider loanwords to be official Japanese words once they are recognized as normal usage words. For example the Japanese word for balcony is "veranda" Which in English is another word for something similar to a balcony, but the Japanese version is just a very contrived sounding "be-ran-da" word. Last edited by P€|\||§_|\/|ast@ on Sat Aug 15, 2009 4:49 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Ktimene's Lover
Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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Okay, but I think that it disrespecting the proper pronunciation of a foreign word. However, the same can be said of Anglicizing any foreign word English gets. Eureka 7 is another and I don't care how the Japanese feel it is to be pronounced, I am pronouncing as it is supposed to be in English: "You-Reek-Uh".
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Sword Magess
 Posts: 285 Location: 武汉 |
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1. Most English speaking anime fans do not speak Japanese. As such, they rely on the Japanese track only to get the mood of the exchange. It is silly to complain about a mispronounced word amidst a stream of incomprehensible syllables.
2. Complaints against the dub may reach the dub company and make it consider pronouncing the words more accurately. Complaining against Japanese track almost certainly won't reach the Japanese company, which is likely to ignore the complaints anyway because accurate pronunciation of foreign words may make the sentences sound awkward to the Japanese audience. 3. Japanese is not as good at emulating the sounds of other languages as English is. A person's ability to produce and distinguishes sounds is limited by the sounds he is familiar with, and his ability to acquire new sounds diminishes with age. For most people, he can only produce and distinguish sounds that exist in the languages he speaks. Japanese largely lacks standalone consonant sounds, which is why words that end in the d consonant sounds obviously sounds like do in the Japanese tracks, among other things. I believe an English speaker encounters a significantly larger range of phonemes than a Japanese speaker. For an English speaker, pronouncing a Japanese name correctly often amounts to stressing the correct syllable, which is a matter of habit, given the irregularities of the English language. In other words, an English speaker likely mispronounced the word because he didn't bother to learn how it is pronounced, while a Japanese speaker likely mispronounced the word because he was screwed by his language. |
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Ktimene's Lover
Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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So, the Japanese would favor something sounding cooler to their native audience than to say a word/name right? Sounds like a cheesy business practice to me. |
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P€|\||§_|\/|ast@
Posts: 3498 Location: IN your nightmares |
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Mistypearl
 Posts: 517 |
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I remember reading somewhere that in Umineko, the original sound novel they were going to pronounce Beatrice's name normally, like in the English language, but then they actually decided to say it a different way because it sounded better, or more sinister that way. So in a way, it could be creative license, I can see somewhat why they decided (in the game and anime) to have Beatrice's name be Be-a-tri-chay than Bee-a-trice. Though it still sometimes makes me wince, it makes her seem more frightening. |
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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Except that it's Greek...? You know... ηὕρηκα? So, by your own logic, you're completely mispronouncing it. Or is it completely OK when it's your own language doing the mangling of foreign words? Now, I could be wrong, but I think this makes you sound more than just a little bit opinionated and foolish. - abunai |
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Sword Magess
Posts: 285 Location: 武汉 |
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Isn't that the normal pronunciation of the name in Italian? If so, it does illustrate another reason: They may be deliberately following a pronunciation in another language. |
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Ktimene's Lover
Posts: 2242 Location: Glendale, AZ (Proudly living in the desert) |
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Abunai, you are correct because I am really opinionated about this and it does make me foolish.
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7585 Location: Wales |
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One of the difference between Japanese and English is that most of the Japanese mora are present in English with a few exceptions like tsu, but the same is not true of the reverse - while the vowels are all there the only English consonant that has a direct equivalent in Japanese is n; the rest are all inseparably coupled with vowels and some are missing altogether so have to be approximated (i.e. v).
Somewhat tangentially, I'm also reminded of something I read, I think it was among Jonathan Clements' writings, that translating American television into in Japanese is (at least sometimes) done purely with pencil, paper and an audio recording. They have to do a lot of guesswork, particularly where it comes to technical jargon. Hence, subtitles for a lot of foreign TV don't always make a great deal of sense, and some of the people who grew up watching this stuff are now animators and putting the same stuff into their anime. |
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Ausdoerrt
 Posts: 481 |
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I'm sure if most Japanese anime fans knew English well enough they'd complain; although, everything said here about the nature of the language is true - try complaining about Chinese dubs/game translations - some names don't even sound close, and others translated using the meaning not phonetics.
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DuskyPredator
 Posts: 15596 Location: Brisbane, Australia |
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I also wonder why certain words that end with a silent e, when they are said in Japanese the e is not kept silent, such as cake that is pronounced "k-ay-k" is instead pronounced "k-ay-ke". It was quite enjoyable though in something like Azumanga Daioh where Yukari is meant to be an english teacher, but she seems to have a great difficulty pronouncing words. It can also be quite interestsing finding out how words have changed when put into the Japanese language, I actualy looked on the net to see how my name would be pronounced.
I understand that the word manga is often is mispronounced when it is meant to be said with a softer a like munga. I myself am trying to pick up Japanese pronounciations, by listening to the Japanese voices. |
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Zalis116
Moderator
 Posts: 6903 Location: Kazune City |
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I'm harder on dub pronunciations for reasons that Shiroi Hane stated. With a few exceptions, all of the sounds in Japanese are present and common in English. Theoretically, it should be no more difficult to pronounce the "mi" sound in the English "me" compared to the "mi" in "miss." So to me, pronouncing "Misuzu" as "Miss Uzu" is just pure laziness or ignorance. I've even tried to be less picky about name pronunciation lately, but I wish that directors would at least aim for consistency if not accuracy. I watched a few episodes of the Samurai 7 dub today, and heard about 3 different renderings of "Sanae." What's with that? While I do forgive Japanese dub name mispronunciations for phonetic reasons, I do admit that I liked hearing "Edward Elrich" over "EDOWAADO ERURIKU" in the dub of the first FMA series. |
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Cyberzerker
Posts: 9 Location: Marietta, Georgia |
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Most of the Dubbed critcisms I have heard where from people who just plain hate Dubs, and mostly during heated Sub vs. Dub debates ( if debate can be used to describe warfare).
Personally, I don't care if a word is misprounced, in English or Japanese or Kajiurian (etc), as long as: 1. The pronunciation is consistant. It bothers me when each character /actor pronounces a name differently, especially in the same scene! 2. It does not interupt the story or break the mood. There are some scenes where the Japanese actors have to speak actual English words and this can be extremely funny...but funny during a serious scene is not funny. An Example would be in the anime BECK when the characters speaking english in some dramatic scenes are obviously not english speakers. This spoils the mood of the scene. This might not be so bad to a non-english speaking audience, but to native english speakers, it is pretty harsh. Any fault in pronunciation lies with the voice directors for not caring, or not knowing. You have to remember the Japanese voice-over work is mostly done in real-time, with multiple actors in front of a monitor ( more like a radio-play) than the domestically dubbed ADR method. examples of this can be seen in the extras of many dvds. |
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